Avoiding Telecomm Pitfalls

There is only one way for a company to approach VOIP/UC and that is how much money is it ultimately going to save. Yes, there are benefits to unified communication but they come with a cost and people aren’t looking to spend more money on their phone systems when their phone works.

So you want to save money? Here are some tips:

1. Do you really need it?Traditional services have become more competitive with the growing number of VOIP options. So why send voice to packetized cloud when you can save money on more reliable traditional services? Query your current carrier and if they can’t give you traditional POTS on a budget find one that will.
2. Is call quality important?There is also the consideration of what you get with VOIP: it is better than cell phone quality but not as good as analog. Why would you want to degrade the quality of your call? To some it’s a trade-off; after all, people have got used to crappy quality because of cell phones.
3. Trying to achieve synchronicity?Are you trying to synchronize communications? You can buy a system that will sync with your MS Exchange server but you will spend three times as much as you would for a highly functional feature-filled VOIP system. If you want a system that will simply send a voicemail to your email you can save $10,000 to $20,000 for most installations. How important is that in the realm of all the things your company has to spend money on?
4. You still need to connect to the phone system.So where does it go once it leaves the office? VOIP is okay inside the office, and it might suffice for most inter-office communications including live company meetings with video. But what you’re connected to outside the office won’t be VOIP.